. >> neither osama bin laden nor his deputy ayman al-zawahiri were terribly impressed with him. he seemed and acted like a thug. he was not very sophisticated. in fact, they considered him a rather poor recruit to al-qaeda. >> narrator: zarqawi would leave kandahar determined to continue jihad, and to prove bin laden wrong. in 2002, he saw his chance. as president bush signaled saddam hussein had to go, zarqawi moved to a terrorist camp in northern iraq. it set off alarm bells at the cia. cia operations officer sam faddis, who ran a kill/capture team, was assigned the case. >> headquarters is extremely, extremely interested. i mean, the number one time-sensitive priority, as of june '02, when i left headquarters, was go collect on this islamic extremist enclave along the iran/iraq border. >> narrator: it didn't take long for faddis to find zarqawi and learn what was going on in the camp. >> we literally had guys that were working for us that were inside the camp. they're working on chemical and biological weapons. they were doing a lot of work with cyanide-based things. >> narra

. >> ayman, we are ready to say this is now over. very dramatic developments in just the past two hours. at about 10:00 p.m. local eastern time, our time, that raid began on the restaurant with commandos entering that restaurant. there was a hail and exchange of gunfire. we're talking about the rapid action battalion that's basically like an s.w.a.t. team equivalent in bangladesh. that raid went on for ten to 20 minutes. there was a series of explosions. i want to go through mamuna. we've been speaking to her. give us an update of what you've witnessed, what you saw and heard over the course of this operation as it unfolded from your vantage point. hello, can you hear us? all right. it seems that we have lost mamuna. >> hello? >> hello, are you with us? okay. we're going to try to re-establish that connection if we can. but with us here in studio, we have with us malcolm nance. malcolm, we've been talking about the significance of this operation. some very important pieces of the muzzle that we've learned. some of it, we're not able

ayman mohyeldin is with us in the studio. you have been gathering as well. >> yeah. one of the things obviously in this digital age is how quickly images have come out. the french police have actually put on their verified twitter account asking people to stop distributing, stop recirculating, disseminating videos. the social media videos we are seeing. we are not putting them on the air but it's giving you a sense of given the fact this was such a tourist destination and so many people were out there, and that it was such a day of celebration, you can imagine how much social media now has been inundated with images of what has happened there. so much so, to the point that the national police in france are asking people to stop circulating those videos out of respect for the families and their victims and it's an indication that this is a very dire situation, not just for the country but for the family members who are still learning about this and people still trying to get ahold as we heard cal report earlier, officials asking people to stay off the phones as they w

ayman model dean joins me now. this is something we are trying to drill down on the number here of the people that could be hostage. the u.s. embassy in dhaka reported reports of shooting and a hostage situation. have you heard more about this fluid number between 20 to 60? >> no, not yet. i have been trying to get ahold of folks in bangladesh, specifically in dhaka, journalists and owes to try to connect with them to get what they are hearing directly from their sources and also to get updates on the ground. that is proving difficult. you can imagine in a fluid situation like this connectivity is going to be a problem for bangladesh. as we've been talking about this the past hour or so it's important to keep in mind the context of what bangladesh has been going through. security has become an increasing problem there. we are talking about what happened in istanbul and obviously on the heels of things in recent months a attacks by isis and al qaeda, that you can't rule that out given the nature of what we are seein

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joining nee now, nbc news foreign correspondent ayman mow mohyeldin, let's put this in the context of the last month. just in the last month, orlando, 50 dead, 49 killed, including the shooter who pledged allegiance to isis. the attack on the istanbul airport, which appears to have been also the work of isis, although no formal credit, though we believe it was them. dozens dead there. the dhaka attack, just in the same week as that, and now this in nice. >> and don't forget about iraq. >> 250 -- >> bigger than all of these. and it's not to say that one is bigger than the other in terms of the magnitude of the loss, but what it demonstrates is the capability of whoever is behind all of these attacks. i don't mean behind it from an operational point of view, but operationally in the sense that there's an ability to inspire these types of attacks. and you know, we're not -- we're still in the very early stages, not sure who is behind this in terms of an organization, but the deliberate attack, and when you start putting it on a -- analyzing it through a matrix of possibilities, the symbo